Portland's 10 best ramen shops

With two serious Tokyo ramen shops set to open their first American shops in Portland this year -- including Marukin, pictured -- the city's Japanese noodle soup landscape could look a lot different just a few months from now. For this roundup, we revisited more than a dozen of our favorite Portland ramen shops, restaurants and carts, then checked out a few others we had never been to before. The result? A delicious list, short on shelf life, perhaps, but long on flavor.

-- Michael Russell

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Michael Russell | The Oregonian/OregonLive

Portland's best ramen

No. 10: Masu

Downtown Portland's 11-year-old Masu survived the departure of chef Ryan Roadhouse -- who went on to open Portland’s best sushi counter, Nodoguro -- and today remains a good option for high-quality raw fish and lively Japanese-themed cocktails. At 11 years old, the dining room, found above an American Apparel, still feels current. You probably didn’t even know they made ramen.

Recommended: Masu stocks its pale miso bowl with plump mushrooms, a soft egg and seared pork belly. I wish the miso flavor were a bit more complex, but extra points for the strip of toasted nori cleverly cantilevered above a mound of negi.

Japanese restaurant chain Shigezo has three Portland locations, the South Park Blocks original, Southeast Division Street’s Yataimura Maru and this latest, just down the road from Northeast Portland’s Toro Bravo. Like its sisters, Kichinto makes reliably good ramen in a variety of styles, including most of the standards (shoyu, shio, etc.) and highly slurpable house-made noodles.

Recommended: The spicy miso, which on our visit had a thick broth, slightly dry beef "chasyu," green onions, a soft egg, bean sprouts and those good house noodles.

Portland’s hippest ramen chain, with its bubblegum-pop design and Tokyo-sized dining rooms, should reach three area locations with a new Northwest shop later this year. Does Boxer Ramen live up to the promise of its design? Not quite -- specifically, I wish they would rethink their sunken-treasure display -- but Boxer’s bowls are reliably bold, filling and flavor-packed. And that’s before you get to the okonomiyaki tots or ice-cream filled mochi.

Recommended: The spicy miso, made violently red by a Calabrian-chile spice blend, with pale noodles, luscious hunks of pork belly and a soft-boiled egg.

There aren’t many Portland chefs you should trust with carte-blanche ramen experimentation. Johanna Ware is one of them. Ware, who worked for New York City’s great ramen herald, David Chang, changes her noodle soup options frequently, though when there's ramen, it's typically both interesting and good.